The Record: Spying ends

THIS WEEK, in a move that can be seen only as progress for anyone who cares about basic civil liberties, the New York City Police Department announced it was disbanding a special surveillance unit that had been set up to spy on members of the Muslim community in the greater metropolitan area, including mosques, grocery stores and student groups in New Jersey.

Theoretically, the unit, which broadly tracked the daily lives of thousands of North Jersey Muslims, was an effort meant to detect terror threats. The unit, known in its latest incarnation as the Zone Assessment Unit, had previously been referred to as the Demographics Unit.

Recently elected New York Mayor Bill de Blasio described the unit's disbanding as "a critical step forward in easing tensions between the police and the communities they serve, so that our cops and our citizens can help one another go after the real bad guys."

Operations undertaken by the special unit, first reported by The Associated Press, included sweeping surveillance on so-called "places of interest" — places where Muslims lived, worshiped, shopped or dined outside New York City. Surveillance teams also targeted popular eateries and bakeries in South Paterson, and even student groups at Rutgers University.

We are glad to see this program disbanded, for it served to unfairly target wide swaths of people who had never been suspected of having any ties to terrorists. In the post-9/11 world, we understand homegrown terrorism is alive and well. We have only to reflect on events at the Boston Marathon one year ago to be reminded of the fact.

However, we are still a nation of basic civil rights, and the NYPD surveillance on mosques and groceries, targeting people merely because of ethnicity or where they worship, goes way beyond the spirit of the Constitution. What's more, the program served to severely damage a lot of communication and goodwill that had been built up since Sept. 11, 2001, among members of law enforcement and the Muslim and Arab communities of North Jersey.

Certainly, we want our law enforcement groups to be vigilant against all criminal and/or terrorist elements that may be plotting to do harm in our own back yard. We also want them to respect basic civil rights by targeting only those people who are real suspects, and who represent a legitimate threat to society.